Soldier of Crusade

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Book: Read Soldier of Crusade for Free Online
Authors: Jack Ludlow
Tags: Historical
these great armies. That the Emperor would want to control the enterprise was certain; what he would be willing to grant in terms of plunder and territorial possessions if successful was as yet unknown, for if it was faith that brought many to answer the crusading call, personal advancement added to both territorial gain would not be far behind.
    These were the thoughts, made up of memory, experience and speculation, that filled the mind of Bohemund, the subject of conversations only with his nephew Tancred, the one person to whom he would occasionally show his innermost feelings. Yet there could be no conclusion; too much – personalities, the outcome of future battles – was open to speculation. That was not a situation that made the leader of the army anxious, it being that with which he had lived since he had first been old enough to reason and to fight.
     
    Even if the Apulians had wanted to move swiftly a rapid advance was barely possible; the old Roman road, acceptable as a trade route for merchants and their goods-laden donkeys scarcely served for an armyof thousands. It stood as an emblem of the polity that was supposed to keep it in good repair; everything was on the perish and that meant progress was naturally constrained. In places, like the high mountain passes, it had been part washed away by winter mudslides and was barely negotiable; even on level ground there were gaps where the polygon stones that were supposed to provide the pavé had been stolen to be put to other uses by locals well able to ignore the central imperial authority, leaving the road in places a quagmire after even a modicum of rainfall.
    That lack of firm rule posed the next hindrance to the daily movements as the hill tribes, never wholly subdued by Byzantium, sought to alleviate the poverty of their miserable existence by a continual set of raids on the Apulian baggage train, but more persistently on the supplies provided by Byzantine storerooms and farms to which Bohemund had helped himself, despite protests, both those carried in carts and that on the hoof: grain, pulses and peas for the men, oats for the horses, and cattle to be slaughtered and provide occasional meat. Worse were the depredations on the herd of spare horses without which no mounted force could go into battle.
    The raids were sharp affairs, short in duration, happening in daylight as well as in darkness, the sole object to swiftly steal what could be carried off in the time between launching an assault and the speed with which the nearest mounted party could react to chase the intruders off. That brought forth another difficulty – pursuit was dangerous to a small party of lances; to follow the tribesmen into their own mountain terrain left the Normans at great peril from ambush, while to mount a greater incursion just saw the raiders melt away to higher ground.
    On the rare occasions when the tribesmen had been corneredthey had proved they could fight; these people saw themselves as the descendants of the armies of Alexander the Great and it was from this high country that had come the men who, under his leadership, had conquered half the known world.
    Many of the Apulian host, if asked, would not shrink to compare Bohemund to that military titan and it had nothing to do with his remarkable height and build; he was the son of Robert de Hauteville, acknowledged to be the greatest soldier of his time and known to the world, for his cunning and cleverness, as the
Guiscard
. The family from which Robert sprang, a string of brothers, having come from the depths of the Contentin in north-west Normandy, had risen from owning nothing but their weapons and their horses to become mighty warriors and the ruling line of Southern Italy and Sicily.
    Bohemund’s half-brother now held a trio of ducal titles while his uncle, another Roger, was the Great Count of Sicily and master of that island, even if, in title, he was supposed to be a vassal of his namesake nephew. Originally

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